Controversial film The Hunt's promo halted after El Paso shooting
Blumhouse, the studio behind satirical horror series The Purge, in which Americans have one day a year on which they can harm or kill anybody they liked with no repercussions, is soon to release a new film in the same vein: The Hunt.
Co-written by Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof, The Hunt, which stars Betty Gilpin from GLOW and Hilary Swank, sees 12 members of the US liberal elite shoot MAGA type "deplorables", who wear trucker hats and cowboy shirts, for fun. It's politically on the nose.
"Did anyone see what our ratf------in-chief just did?" one character asks near the start of the film. Another replies: "At least The Hunt's coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables."
In the wake of the shootings in El Paso, Texas however, which saw an anti-immigrant gunman leave 34 people dead and dozens more injured, Universal has pulled two adverts for the film, and is reconsidering its forthcoming strategy out of respect to the victims.
It's not the first time studios have adjusted their promo to navigate real life events. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Warner Bros. stalled Collateral Damage, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a family man who loses his wife and child to terrorism. A scene featuring the Twin Towers was also edited out of Spider-Man.
<br> Idris Elba's Bastille Day, about civilians killed in a Paris bomb explosion, was pulled from cinemas following the 2016 terror attack in Nice. The 2017 Death Wish remake was delayed by several months in response to a mass shooting in Las Vegas, while TV series Shooter was also delayed following a shooting of black men by police.
